I'm a Pirate (Cont.)

                With software, I don’t have quite as definitive standards. Many software packages and operating systems can cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars to purchase normally. Microsoft Office, Windows, and the Adobe Creative Suite (which I can neither confirm, nor deny that I possess illegally) are major culprits. They are applications that I find that I need quite regularly for both coursework and personal uses. In this case, the product in question is considerably out of my price range, especially considering that I will probably not be using it extensively. What it comes down to is that I either completely forego obtaining the product or pirate it. There are often open source options for most of the popular paid software packages: Linux, OpenOffice, Gimp, and others, but they are considerably less streamlined and convenient than their big name counterparts. So, since there is no option of purchasing, I find the increase of efficiency and quality justifies using less conventional means of obtaining the products.

                I find textbooks to also be an interesting case. I am already paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to attend a university, live here, and other various expenses as a result. I am racking up debt just for the privilege to attend the school. Then I am required to spend $100+ on a mass produced stack of paper? The prices of the books are highly inflated, which would have to be due to the publishers, as the professors that write them aren’t exactly rolling in cash. I couldn’t be because of production costs, because not only do e-books costs similar amounts, but non-academic books of the same composition also do not reach the astronomic price of a textbook. Because of all those factors, I have no problem downloading any textbooks that I need. The only barrier is finding an actual copy of the exact texts that I need. In fact, throughout the past year, I spent a total of less than $150 on textbooks. This particular term, I spent around $30, mostly thanks to various alternative methods I found for obtaining the required texts for my courses.